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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538861">Paris, 20-23 October 1637</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate'>Anima Nightmate (faithhope)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All For One and, well, you know the rest... [41]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Musketeers (2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>BAMF Constance, BAMF Constance d'Artagnan, Cadets, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Conspiracy, Flashbacks, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, Medical Procedures, Military Training, Non-Explicit Medical Procedure, Panic, Poetry, Politics, Referenced scars, Referenced stab wound, Shakespeare Quotations, Shakespearean Sonnets, Some Historical Fudging, Swearing, Thirty Years War, Training, Wartime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:47:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24538861</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Madame?”</p><p>She’s staring. Just staring. Something about the tremor in his voice pulls her into herself, and she pushes her own shaking feelings under, keeping a touch of the anger to lend her voice a bit of power.</p><p>“Run now, wake Serge. Tell him I’ll meet him in the courtyard.”</p><p>It looks like they’re going to need all the help they can get. She hopes to God she’s wrong.</p><p>*</p><p>Another installment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Constance &amp; Original Male Character(s), Constance &amp; Serge, Constance &amp; Treville, Tréville &amp; Original Male Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All For One and, well, you know the rest... [41]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/944322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Alarums</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h4>
  <b>Friday 23rd October 1637: late, Musketeer Garrison</b>
</h4><p>“Madame?”</p><p>She’s staring. Just staring. Something about the tremor in his voice pulls her into herself, and she pushes her own shaking feelings under, keeping a touch of the anger to lend her voice a bit of power.</p><p>“Run now, wake Serge. Tell him I’ll meet him in the courtyard. I need someone to fetch Fabron from his bed. Do you know his address?” He shakes his head, face slack and eyes enormous in the corridor’s night light. She nods briskly. “Return here after waking Serge, or send someone else, and I’ll have it ready.” He stares. “<em>Go!</em>”</p><p>He makes a kind of gulp of sound and hares away as she slams the door and begins dressing properly, pinning her hair and cinching everything tight with a vengeful kind of force, refusing to think about anything except the next steps.</p><p>They will need to double the guard here, now, to be absolutely sure this is not a broader attack, and Fabron is just going to have to put in for overtime for tonight’s work. She has no fear that the lad will find him at home – Fabron is famously… oh, what’s the word?! well, the opposite of Athos (or Aramis and Porthos, for that matter), anyway – his main passion and pastime is further sculpting his body and treating it like a rather austere temple, forever being improved to the glory of its maker. He prides himself on how much sleep he gets a night.</p><p>She scribbles his address on a corner of parchment, and opens her door just ahead of the cadet’s knock.</p><p>Cadets plural – in Brujon’s lee is Charbonneau, dancing a little in place. She frowns questioningly at Brujon, who says, simply “He’s the fastest.”</p><p>It’s nothing but the truth, except that he’s also the scattiest, and… she goes still in nasty thought, cold running through her.</p><p>“Get someone else.”</p><p>“But Mada–!”</p><p>“<em>As well</em>. I’ll not have any of you out alone. Not right now. Has he told you what this is about?”</p><p>Charbonneau, abruptly as sober as she’s ever seen him, nods emphatically.</p><p>“Then you’ll know I’m not messing about. And neither should you. Pick someone fast, get yourselves armed – <em>but not too heavily, </em>this is about <em>speed!</em> – and get to this address.” He peers at the paper she thrusts at him, twisting his head, but Constance has ensured that every single one of them can read, at least to this standard, and he folds it into his fist and his fist into his pocket, the importance of the mission describing tense lines across every part of him. “Go!” She claps her hands twice and they startle. “Do it <em>now!</em>”</p><p>They scamper, and she shouts after them: “Get at least seven more lads awake and get them on guard!”</p><p>Brujon skids to a halt and turns. He looks paler than usual under the light at the top of the stairs. “Where are you going, Madame?” Charbonneau’s thundering footsteps underpin each word. They may not need to work too hard at waking others…</p><p>“To see him. After la–” She bites her words off. He doesn’t need to know about ‘last time’. “After all,” she amends, “he’ll need good friends around him.”</p><p>She doesn’t know how much he makes of this, but he nods anyway, eyes still huge, takes off after the other boy.</p><p>When she makes the courtyard, Serge is there, hauling himself into a hooded coat that’s seen better days, possibly decades, from what she can make out. He’s underlit by a covered lantern on the ground beside him, and looks as grim as she’s ever seen him.</p><p>“He told you?”</p><p>“Aye. You want me here or with you?”</p><p>Her breath stops in her throat. For all her telling Charbonneau to not go alone, there she was, about to pound the distance in the dark.</p><p>Serge’s cracked mummer’s mask grins abruptly. “No thought for yourself. Tolja before, ain’t I?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes at him. “We’ll wait for Fabron, then.”</p><p>“Him? He’ll not–”</p><p>“He’ll stay here with them. Fighting in the light. That’s his strength.”</p><p>“Werrrll, yeah.” Serge hawks and spits, head turned from her. “I’m boiling mad right now,” he confesses on the return in a gravel murmur, “and I’d not tell anyone else that.”</p><p>She scrunches her mouth somewhere between sympathy and agreement.</p><p>“Fackin idiot, anyway,” he continues. “He’s too,” he gestures frustratedly, “well, you know, for that kind of shit. Where the fuck did he think he was going?”</p><p>She shrugs. She has conjured at least three possibilities already. “Could be anything. I’m going to find out.”</p><p>They watch Charbonneau and… Royer. Okay. He’s tied his hair back, and both lads pull hoods up before sprinting out through the wicket gate. Dupont, trotting along after them, bolts the wicket.</p><p>“Good lad,” mutters Serge.</p><p>She breathes deeply. “They’ll be alright.” She turns and yells: “Let’s get some more light on this! No-one in or out unless…?”</p><p>“They know the password, Madame!” comes a ragged chorus from the lads struggling into an assortment of clothes and weapons on their way out. It looks as though at least two dormitories have turned out.</p><p>“And…?!”</p><p>The chorus frays into a disjointed mumbling, plus some bickering. She rolls her eyes at Serge, who cackles delightedly. “I think they might need a bit more work,” he confides.</p><p>“I think I’m going to start running midnight drills,” she mutters thoughtfully.</p><p>“I look forward to sleeping through ’em and listening to folk whinge the next day.”</p><p>“No exceptions,” she tells him. “You’re still, for what it’s worth, part of this garrison.”</p><p>“Bollocks,” he grumbles. “Knew I should have married that baker and settled down.”</p><p>“Yeah, right.” He moves to sit on the step heading towards the mess side of the building. “Right!” she yells, turning to survey her troops, hands on hips. “I need a double guard on gate and roof! I need more lights! I need people looking like they know what they’re doing and I need it five minutes ago! Break out the firearms and get them out here on the table. Anyone not guarding is lighting. Anyone not lighting is loading. Anyone not loading is sharpening something. Anyone not doing anything is sweeping the stables for a week. Move it!”</p><p>Across the growing light and bustle of the yard she sees de la Croix, face pale and set, frowning with that imperious mien at the scene between them. He’s pulled away by a hand on his elbow, towards the armoury, but not before Constance feels a wave of rage billow up from her gut.</p><p>*</p>
<h4>
  <b>Three days ago: morning</b>
</h4><p>“You can’t tell him yet,” says Tréville.</p><p>She’s still staring at the piece of paper in her hand, unfolded in the clever light of her secure room. “He has to go,” she whispers, finally. “I can’t have him here.”</p><p>“You can’t do that. We can’t risk them knowing.”</p><p>She licks her lips. “How can I trust him? Seeing <em>this?!</em>”</p><p>“There’s a chance,” says Tréville, carefully, “that he doesn’t know the significance, thought he was… duly reporting to the Equerry, or someth–”</p><p>“Why would the… <em>sinecured</em> Master of the King’s fucking <em>Horses</em>,” she hisses, unable, somehow, to raise any proper voice. She thinks it may be from the dryness of her throat, “need a god-damned list of the fucking <em>armaments</em> in <em>my bastard garrison?!</em>” She heaves a breath and, with it, finds her volume. “And why, in the name of the all that’s holy, would this shit-stained hand puppet ask his little cousin instead of, oh, I don’t know, you? Or <em>me?</em>” She raises her eyes from the neat and damning tallies. “How…? <em>How</em> can someone who’s had so much <em>education</em> be so frigging <em>dense?!</em> You’re asking me to believe that that snobbish little… <em>pimple</em> is so wildly naïve about the workings of national and courtly fucking politics that he thinks he should be turning over information he’s gained by either tallying the stock while no-one’s looking or breaking into <em>my</em> bloody office to peek through the bloody books to– to the King’s– to that bloody–! It’s not… it’s not <em>even…!</em>” she makes a sound like a scalded cat and waves the increasingly crumpled sheet in the air. “It’s not even <em>fucking correct!</em>”</p><p>The Minister frowns immediately. Looking back, she suspects he’d been holding in a smirk at her more colourful combinations. “What’s this?”</p><p>“I mean,” she finally simmers down to something more like a normal pitch and tone of voice, “there’s no date, so some of the other stuff could just be older figures, but we’ve never had that many pikes, though I wish we did.”</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>She points.</p><p>“That’s odd.”</p><p>“Odd? <em>Odd?!</em>” She suddenly remembers that she’s been guldering like a fishwife at the First Minister of France and feels herself reddening. “Um.” She heaves a shaking breath. “The whole thing’s diabolical. And you want me to keep that little pus-stain in <em>my</em> garrison.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Right. Why?”</p><p>He eases the paper out of her hand with a <em>May I?</em> glance. “Because I need someone I actually trust to keep an eye on him, and I need no-one else to know that we know this.”</p><p>She feels her jaw clench and her nostrils flare, and wonders if she looks as demented as she feels right now. Slowly, deliberately, she rolls her shoulders while breathing in and out, deeply, from her belly. Everything becomes smoother until she’s finally able to look the Minister in the face again.</p><p>“Right.” More breaths. “Right.” Another. “Did I mention that I think I might be due a pay raise?</p><p>A small chuff of air that may even be something like a laugh under those frowning blue eyes. “I’ll be sure to look into it, Madame. Later.”</p><p>“A <em>lot</em> later. Now–”</p><p>*</p>
<h4>
  <b>This evening</b>
</h4><p>She’s pulled from her recollections and surmises by a hammering at the gate. She finds her hand at her belt and lets it stay there. Everyone in eyeshot goes silent. Dupont stares at her. She, widening her eyes meaningfully, advances on the door and waves him a <em>Go on!</em> with her spare hand as Serge creaks to his feet.</p><p>“Who goes there?!”</p><p>“Fabron, Charbonneau and Royer!”</p><p>Dupont <em>tchack</em>s back the viewing slot. He nods. “Password?” he murmurs.</p><p>Constance can’t quite make out what they say in return, but his shoulders sink with his breath and he unbolts the wicket to swing it open two-handed, while she hurriedly raises and cocks her pistol to cover those coming in. <em>Another training point</em> she thinks, already feeling weary.</p><p>Fabron looks deeply startled to be faced with a pistol, and slowly raises his hands. She motions him to step aside from her view with a tilt of head and weapon, only lowering it when Royer completes the trio and helps Dupont slam and bolt the wicket.</p><p>The latter turns to see her gesture her pistol towards his belt and he closes his eyes for a long moment. “Sorry, Madame d’Artagnan!” His Eastern accent sounds stronger for chagrin, and his age trembles through his tones.</p><p>“Sloppy.” She uncocks her own, clips it back on her belt. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” She looks to Fabron. “I need you to stay here.”</p><p>“Of course. Do you know when–?”</p><p>“That all depends on what I find when I get there.”</p><p>Serge lumbers up beside and slightly behind her. “You wanna ride?”</p><p>“Honestly? I think it’d take as long with all the faff either end.”</p><p>A hoarse caw of laughter. “Right you are, Madame.”</p><p>“You armed?”</p><p>“You need to ask?”</p><p>“Let’s go, then.”</p><p>As they approach the wicket, Dupont lifts and cocks his pistol and steps back so that Royer can open it to let them through, surveying the street with practice yard precision. She sends him the briefest of approving glances before hurrying on, hearing the small door slam and bolt behind them.</p><p>“Right,” she says, almost to herself more than Serge, who grunts an affirmative and bowls into a rapid pace beside her, lantern now shuttered and swinging at his side.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please note that if you’re reading this before the second chapter gets posted, you might want to check the tag changes when the new chapter drops if people talking about wounds (quite non-explicitly, but still), etc. might be a cause of consternation for you.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Excisions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content Notes: Bit more intense in some ways; if even vaguely implied surgical procedures squick you out, maybe skip down to the * (although it becomes, in some ways, more emotionally intense, with – fairly vague – flashbacks to assault) …</p><p>Please let me know if you think more content notes are needed.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h4>Friday 23rd October 1637: late, Louvre Palace, Paris</h4><p>“How long since this happened?”</p><p>“Not long – we fetched you as fast as we could.” A staring pause. “An hour, maybe? Since he– since they– Sorry, it’s– Please?”</p><p>“Where’s that hot water?”</p><p>“Wash– wa– wash y–”</p><p>“Calm yourself, sir, I am a physician. Scissors, please? We’re just going to get this off you. And– good grief. <em>You</em>’ve been in the wars!”</p><p>“Ha! Li– Litera–”</p><p>“He was a–”</p><p>“I am perfectly cognizant of the Minister’s history in that regard. I also know that at least one of these was stitched by my late colleague, ah, good, that’s– no, just lie still, that’s a <em>very</em> good chap. The good thing about treating chaps like you is that you know how to keep the bleeding under control – you’ve done half my job for me. <em>Veeery</em> good. All right. Now. No, no, just, please, Minister, <em>lie still</em>. Hold, er–” he clicks his fingers rapidly.</p><p>“Perrault, sir.”</p><p>“Yes, yes. Hold his hand, if you would. Just squeeze if you need to. Good, good, good-good-good. Now this will, yes, that’s better isn’t it? Right. Right. It’ll bleed a bit now, don’t worry, just need to get the better humours through, now, this will sting a little. Ah-ah, just lie still. Good chap, <em>goood</em>. Excellent! Nice clean cut, deep, but very neat. Now, Perrault, was it? If you can just hold thi– wonderful. Now, Minister, I’m going to make the first stitch, and I know very well you know quite how peculiar this i– <em>there!</em> Now, I’m going to be busy, so why don’t you tell us a story, eh, Perrault?”</p><p>“What? I mean: beg pardon, sir?!”</p><p>“A story – something to pass the time. I’m busy, and I can’t have him talking – quite messes with my rhythm – so it’s on you, fellow.”</p><p>“Um–” At this moment, he envies Robert, who has ostentatiously busied himself elsewhere, white as the sheet beneath the Minister, rapidly reddening, eyes averted.</p><p>“First thing that pops into your head, go on!”</p><p>“This is the first time I’ve seen someone stitched, sir.”</p><p>“And, with God’s grace, it’ll be your last. Maybe sing a song, then?”</p><p>“Me? I can’t hold a tune in a bucket, sir.”</p><p>“Hah!”</p><p>“Last time I tried, the young, er, the young lady in question threw her drink over me.”</p><p>The Minister wheezes rapidly, and he’s worried until he realises that it’s laughter, and it’s horrifying for a moment, because when has he ever seen him actually laugh more than that customary sardonic bark?</p><p>“Poetry, now,” he babbles on. “She was a lot more receptive when I tried some poetry.”</p><p>“That’s the spirit!”</p><p>He chuckles thinly.</p><p>“So go on, then.”</p><p>“Sir?”</p><p>“Give us a – steady there, Minister!”</p><p>“He, er, <em>oh!</em>”</p><p>“Perrault?”</p><p>“He, um, he’s got a <em>very – mhm!</em> – strong grip, sir!”</p><p>“I don’t doubt it! So go on, then – give us a verse or two… <em>Ah</em>-ah, just one more, nice and easy does it. <em>Now</em>, Perrault!”</p><p>“My mind’s gone blank, sir!”</p><p>“<em>Anything!</em>”</p><p>«<em>Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,</em><br/>«<em>Haply I think on thee, and then my state,</em><br/>«<em>Like to the lark at break of day arising</em><br/>«<em>From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;</em></p><p>«<em>For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings</em><br/>«<em>That then I scorn to change my state with kings.</em>»</p><p>There’s a horrible silence.</p><p>“What was <em>that?!</em>”</p><p>“English!” coughs the Minister, suddenly.</p><p>“Er, yes. Sorry. Shakespeare. First thing. Sorry.”</p><p>“Well, my English is pretty good, actually, but – <em>there!</em> All done, just need to wash you down a little.”</p><p>“I can do that, if you prefer, sir?”</p><p>“Very gently…”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” he tells him reproachfully. “I <em>have</em> been a body servant, sir.”</p><p>“Oh. Well. Carry on, then.”</p><p>It’s extraordinary, how quickly his hands slip back into the rhythms, the pressure, the firm delicacy. It feels almost a privilege to be doing this as the Minister gasps his way into something quieter, and he’s not sure what to make of that thought, so tucks it away.</p><p>The doctor is busy with his instruments. “What did it mean, then?”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Your, er, <em>Shakespeare</em>. Couldn’t come up with a good French poet, eh? I’m partial to a little de Ronsard, myself.”</p><p>“Really, sir?” He finds it hard to imagine this professionally cheerful gentleman, all spare, brusque, muscular lines under an enviable head of silver hair, diving into the endlessly florid despair of a man who seemed incapable of stopping writing about how much he loved to hate (or hated to love) an endless series of beguiling, damaging, damaged objects of his desire.</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>“Um, well, I just did the last bit – the part after the volta?” Blankness. “After it’s all turned around.” He reaches for a clean cloth to pat the Minister’s side dry, his eye drawn with unseemly fascination to the angry pucker of the new line through his flesh. “It starts – the bit before I said – with a man who’s diving deeper into discontent and jealousy, and then remembers his love, and how everything turns around when he does, and he realises that he is, in fact, blessed, and wouldn’t swap his lot for that of, um, kings.”</p><p>“Well, jolly good. Really does no good to brood – even the English know that!”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>As they start to wind the bandage around the Minister’s chest, the door bursts open and the doctor immediately barks: “This is a private chamber, Madame, and a delicate–”</p><p>“We came as soon as we could!”</p><p>He feels a warmth that’s something like relief flood his chest. “Madame d’Artagnan?”</p><p>“C-Constance?”</p><p>“Stay <em>still</em>, Minister!” He turns his full austerity on her. “Madam, I <em>must</em> insist that–”</p><p>“Constance?”</p><p>“Oh, for goodness’ sake! I’ll wait outside if it makes everyone feel more <em>modest</em>.” Her eyes roll and he fights not to grin outright, even though none of this is directed at him. “You’re alive and talking, that’s a weight off my mind immediately. Serge is here too,” she adds, gently. “We’ll be right here.”</p><p>He frowns, tries to twist towards her, but Perrault, to his later mortification, finds his fingers tightening on the Minister’s shoulder and he subsides immediately.</p><p>*</p><p>Finally settled to everyone’s satisfaction in bed, propped on a mound of pillows, he watches the physician stride out and nods to Perrault. The man opens his mouth and he cuts in: “I don’t care what the doctor said. Send them in. Now.”</p><p>“Yes, sir. I’ll… wait outside…” He nods in answer to the half-question, watches the man trot to the door and bow in Constance and Serge.</p><p>“Don’t you dare sit up,” she snaps immediately.</p><p>He coughs a little, smiles. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve had worse,” he finds himself adding, thinking to make it comforting, and hearing it come out defensive.</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “I know: I was there.” She frowns about his chamber. “Is there anything I can fetch you? What do you need?”</p><p>“I need two days’ rest, plenty of water–”</p><p>“Convenient,” puts in Serge, “to get stabbed on a Friday, then.”</p><p>“And will you really stay in bed for two wh–” she breaks off, narrowing her eyes at him, and he feels unaccountably nervous. “The physician said a week, didn’t he?”</p><p>He draws a deep breath, tries not to wince for it. “Listen, Madame–” and breaks off for the look in her eyes. “Constance,” he says, more gently. “I’m going to be fine.”</p><p>Her brows crease upward in the middle, eyes becoming large and soft. He can’t quite be sure, but he thinks that’s more dangerous than her hectoring him. She blinks rapidly, as though at the end of a thought, then takes a deep breath and says: “I know that. But it’s about how fast that happens, and how we avoid delaying it. By not being stupid,” she adds, in a tone he suspects she’s been using a fair amount with the cadets, and bloody hell, it works. Serge snorts softly, but is nodding earnestly when he looks over at him.</p><p>“Are you–” He coughs weakly, feels the pull of the stitches, can’t help the grimace this time and she’s abruptly by him with a cup of water, supporting his head and holding it to his lips. He wants to object that he’s fine, but he suspects that he should save his strength for when he genuinely has to do this for himself.</p><p>He’s trying to find a way to explain to himself that it’s not the wound. Not as such.</p><p>“What happened?” she asks, as she sets it down.</p><p>“Are you two going to stand over me all night, or are you at least going to get seats?” He feels the blood drain from his face, his torso tensing to rise. “The cadets. You left them–”</p><p>“Fabron is there. Everything is barred. They’re armed and guarding themselves.” She quirks an unimpressed expression at him as he subsides and she heaves a chair over, saying: “I think you’ve forgotten who you’re speaking to.”</p><p>Now Serge is definitely laughing.</p><p>“Well, I <em>have</em> been injured,” he protests, relieved when she clearly hears or sees the humour he intended in the statement and smirks at him.</p><p>“Apparently so,” she returns, drily. “So? What happened?”</p><p>“It’s pretty simple,” he tells them, face schooled as well as he can make it, “I was stabbed in the dark.”</p><p>“And in the side,” puts in Serge.</p><p>“Quite.”</p><p>“Whereabouts?”</p><p>He points to his upper left flank, tells her: “I’ll not move this arm much, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>“Doctor’s orders?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Fine, but I meant: where were you?”</p><p>“When I was– when I got this?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>He closes his eyes for a long moment, back in the dark, opens them. “Does it matter?”</p><p>“We need to let the Red Guard know where they can start looking.”</p><p>“They were there.”</p><p>Constance is halfway out of her seat. “Did <em>they</em>–?!”</p><p>“No, no. <em>No</em>.” And it hurts to raise even his right arm to wave her back down. “After.”</p><p>“So they brought you back?”</p><p><em>A mess of shouting, slapping footsteps, an arm around him and a hiss of pain, bright and terrible, lancing through him. </em>Shit, sorry!</p><p>On a short breath, he says: “Yes.”</p><p>“How many of them were there?”</p><p><em>He staggers, the arm tightens around him</em>. Bring that fucking lantern over here, he’s– <em>fuck!</em> Sorry, Minister!</p><p>“Well, they, they tend to be in pairs or more; standard security… I think they–”</p><p>“I <em>meant</em> the assailants.”</p><p>
  <em>A heavy hand in the dark, a vehement mutter, footsteps.</em>
</p><p>“I think… maybe…”</p><p>
  <em>Spinning, too fast, hand scrabbling for purchase on his own blade.</em>
</p><p>He rolls his eyes as if in recollection, calculation, doesn’t dare close them too long. “Two. I think. Yes.”</p><p>They’re both frowning. “Did they… get away…?” she asks at last, almost as if embarrassed.</p><p>“It was dark,” he says carefully. “I wasn’t exactly expecting…”</p><p><em>A thump. Air going out. </em>Just do it! <em>Panting breaths. His? Or–?</em> Gotta send a message…</p><p>“Sorry,” he says, “what was that?”</p><p>They look at each other, concern written large for him, who knows them both so well, then back at him. “What can you tell us about them?” she asks.</p><p>He feels his brow crease. His breath is coming shorter. “It was <em>dark</em>,” he says again, relieved to hear that it sounds impatient, maybe even a touch sarcastic rather than defensive. He feels the pain come again as he deliberately relaxes the muscles of his back and sides, can’t hold back the faint hiss.</p><p>Constance frowns immediately. Looks around. “Did he leave anything?”</p><p>
  <em>Left the dark, the darkness. Fist wrapped in leather, a twist in the shadows.</em>
</p><p>“I think he said something about coming back with a draught. Or,” he draws another short breath, shifts, winces, trying not to let impatience clench him again, “more likely send someone with it.”</p><p>Gotta send a message. <em>One of them winded from an elbow, now held tight, struggling, stamping, knees kicked to buckle into a kneel, standard subduing practice.</em></p><p>“We should probably let you sleep.”</p><p>“No, no, you’re all right.”</p><p>“Have they posted guards?”</p><p>He frowns, struggling. <em>No you don’t! Stay still. Good boy.</em> Shakes his head. “Perrault will stay, I think.”</p><p>“We’ll check,” says Constance, very gently. A governess kind of voice, he thinks, muzzily. Nursemaid. A cool hand on a hot brow.</p><p><em>A blow to the side of the head, but he’s still moving. Got to delay, got to put them off.</em> Help! Help! Murder!</p><p>He’s frowning now. It’s all. It’s.</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Minister,” says Serge, and it’s so strange to hear him use that word, so earnestly as well, “you gotta rest.” <em>The rest’ll be ’ere soon, hurry up!</em></p><p>He nods, he’s got nothing else. <em>Just a flesh wound.</em></p><p><em>An </em>oouff!<em> as the back of his head connects sharply with gut or groin. </em>Fuckin’ ’ave ’im, the cunt!</p><p>Help! Help! Murder!</p><p>
  <em>There’s something wrong.</em>
</p><p>“Minister? Tréville?” A pause. “Jean-A– Armand?”</p><p>“Ah, fuck’s sake. ’E’s not answered to that in donkeys’ years. Oi! <em>Tréville! Wakey-wakey!</em>”</p><p>The fist twisted in leather dissolves and a simpler pain returns, along with light and the slightly less-welcome sight of Serge’s face, all-too close.</p><p>“Hunmh!” Pushing back into the mound of pillows doesn’t get him very far, and hurts abominably, but it has the desired effect as Serge retreats, aided somewhat by Constance, and the thought about voices, accents, and identifying cries for help writhes from his grip, slippery as a fish, and he shakes his head in its wake.</p><p>“We should let you sleep,” she says, somewhere between soothing and sorry and stern. It’s a potent combination, he decides.</p><p>“D’Artagnan is,” he tells her, breath coming short again, “a very lucky man.”</p><p>“No ’e ain’t,” cuts in Serge, checking under his chair and picking up a worn old scabbard, hiding a wickedly sharp dagger he remembers well, looking down the barrel of a decade or so as he does so, which the old man secretes somewhere under his shapeless short-coat, “reason being: ’e’s ’undred-fifty-odd miles away where chances of getting a <em>midnight drilling</em> from Madame are – <em>ow!</em> – somewhat – <em>come on</em>, I’m an old man! – sparse.”</p><p>“You!” she says, shaking the object of her bright-eyed ire, “are a terrible old bastard.”</p><p>“Watch it! We’re in the posh bit now.”</p><p>“We’ll leave you to your rest,” she tells him, dragging Serge by the elbow. “And we’ll be back to check on you soon.”</p><p>“You gonna discipline me, Madame?”</p><p>“You bloody wish!”</p><p>And then they’re gone, and Perrault is slipping in with a whispered apology and a folded paper containing powdered oblivion, which he takes with watered wine and a certain relief in surrender. They’ll be back soon.</p><p>Perrault sits by him, reading quietly, leaves the light burning night-long.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The sonnet is one I’d not heard of (and, let’s face it, your man wrote a LOT of them) until reading <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryfeather/pseuds/cherryfeather">cheeryfeather</a>’s  gorgeous modern AU about Les Inseparables as professional actors putting on a production of Othello (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707083">my heart upon my sleeve</a>, which mentions <a href="http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/29">Sonnet 29</a> as a directorial option for the play, used in/ as the intro (somewhat like the sonnet at the beginning of Romeo &amp; Juliet, I guess) to set the tone. I found out a lot about French poets of the era, and the era preceding, but either the translations were unsatisfactory, or the poems too bawdy for Perrault to use (no matter <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_de_l%E2%80%99Aubespine#Poetry">how tempted I was</a>) in this context. And suddenly this one made sense, so in it went.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I realise that I’ve not described any of my OCs, even though I’ve got quite vivid images in my head of how they should look. I’m kind of fascinated by the alchemy that happens in translation, and wonder how others are ‘seeing’ the OCs. Many of the cadets’ visual depictions in my head are based on the glimpses we get of the many unnamed ones in e.g. Brothers in Arms. Goodness knows where Fabron and Perrault came from!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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